[69] The important part which the cotton and iron industries play in the export trade of England entitles them to special consideration as representatives of world-industry. Out of £263,530,585 value of English exports in 1890, cotton comprised £74,430,749; iron and steel, £31,565,337.
[70] Cunningham, chap. ii. p. 450.
[71] Schulze-Gaevernitz, Der Grossbetrieb, p. 34.
[72] Ure, The Cotton Manufacture, p. 187.
[73] Modern economy now favours the specialisation of a factory and often of a business in a single group of processes—e.g., spinning or weaving or dyeing, both in the cotton and woollen industries. This, however, is applicable chiefly to the main branches of textile work. In minor branches, such as cotton thread, the tendency is still towards an aggregation of all the different processes under a single roof, both in England and in the United States.
[74] P.R. Hodge, civil engineer—evidence before House of Lords Committee in 1857.
In Germany a spinning-wheel had been long in use for flax-spinning, which in effect was an anticipation of the throstle (cf. Karmarch, Technologie, vol. ii. p. 844, quoted Schulze-Gaevernitz, p. 30), and machine-weaving is said to have been discovered in Danzig as early as 1579.
[75] Cf. Brentano, Uber die Ursachen der heutigen socialen Noth; Der Grossbetrieb, p. 30.
[76] Porter, Progress of the Nation, p. 219.
[77] Selected from Porter, p. 218.